US Officials’ Handling of the Pandemic Is ‘Catastrophic Exercise in Bad Government’: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized federal public health officials for their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that not enough supporting scientific evidence and data have been provided to the public to warrant the various mandates.

“You just have one public official who’s never been elected … no scientific citation for any of these mandates, simply telling Americans: ‘do what you’re told,’” Kennedy told NTD at the “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington on Jan. 23. It’s “all designed to instill fear and confusion in Americans, and it’s just a catastrophic exercise in bad government and manipulation,” Kennedy added.

Kennedy said that this lack of scientific integrity has created chaos and doubt in the public, which cannot tell if mandates are based on facts or meant to scare people into compliance.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Director Rochelle Walensky admitted in August 2021 that the vaccines prevent severe illness but do not stop transmission of the virus.

“Our vaccines are working exceptionally well,” Walensky told CNN. “They continue to work well for Delta, with regard to severe illness and death—they prevent it. But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”

Kennedy, along with thousands of others who attended the Defeat the Mandates Rally, wants to see an end to mandates on vaccines. Many who are already vaccinated say forcing people to vaccinate is unamerican.

“What’s happening in our country is the cruelty of the mandates, the irrationality of the mandates, a violation of all of our traditional values in this country, and ultimately our humanity. And the irrationality of it all, what good is that doing to anybody? It’s punitive. And it’s very, very sad for America,” Kennedy said of the policies that prevented an unvaccinated man from getting a heart transplant.

Another criticism Kennedy had was that natural immunity has been completely overlooked by the Biden administration in the rush to require vaccines.

“The natural exposure to infection is more protective over time. Now, that doesn’t mean that vaccines are always worthless, what it means is that you have to carefully assess the risk from disease and risk from the vaccine, and you have to make a cost-benefit analysis. And that is really the basis of the problem here. There was never any scientific citation. There was never any democratic process,” said Kennedy.

Dr. Scott Atlas, a former White House COVID-19 Task Force adviser during the Trump administration, also criticized officials for not recognizing natural immunity after the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decide to uphold the health care worker vaccine mandate on Jan. 13.

“Our continued denial of superior protection in recovered individuals, with or without vaccination, compared to vaccinated individuals who’ve never had the infection,” he said. “The denial of that is simply unprecedented in modern history, proven fact and decades of fundamental immunology are somehow denied.”

Atlas told The Epoch Times that the ruling is “another serious denial of scientific fact” specifically mentioning the denial of natural immunity in health care worker vaccine mandates.

Kennedy, who has been a long-time environmental lawyer and has litigated cases with officials for shortcutting the regulatory process, said the same process should be required before any mandate and detailed information about infections and deaths should be collected and shared with the public.

“If you are managing a pandemic, in an ideal situation you have very rigorous information gathering analytics and reporting protocols, [but] what we saw was absolutely none of that,” Kennedy continued. “We don’t know what the infection-fatality rate is. We never got the stratified data that says that elderly people are 1,000 times more at risk and that the statistical risk to the young is zero. The networks weren’t reporting that, nobody knew it because Fauci wasn’t giving it to us.”

Dr. Peter McCullough, a leading U.S. cardiologist and epidemiologist who has over 600 peer-reviewed articles under his belt, told The Epoch Times that U.S. public health officials are not abreast of the latest on prevention and treatment for COVID.

“I think they’re running about nine months behind on the data. And the recent book that came out by Scott Atlas, who was on the White House Task Force, he agrees. He believes we basically have a crisis of incompetence, they don’t have top-shelf doctors, like myself and Dr. Atlas,” said Dr. Peter McCullough. “They don’t have those doctors in positions of authority running our public health agencies, and boy do we need them.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-officials-handling-of-the-pandemic-is-catastrophic-exercise-in-bad-government-robert-f-kennedy-jr_4250992.html

*********************************************

New Drug for Seriously Ill COVID-19 Patients Shows Promise Under Right to Try Act

New information collected under the federal Right to Try Act shows promise for the new drug ZYESAMI, now in clinical trials for the treatment of serious cases of COVID-19.

The information was collected by a hospital in the U.S. southwest, drug developer NRx announced in a news release Jan. 26.

ZYESAMI, developed by the Radnor, Pennsylvania-based pharmaceuticals company, currently is being tested with patients as part of the approval process of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company hopes to earn emergency-use authorization (EUA) that would allow widespread use of the drug in the treatment of COVID-19.

For now, the drug has progressed far enough in the process to be used by more patients under the federal Right to Try Act. That law allows the use of investigational drugs for patients diagnosed with life-threatening diseases or conditions, who have tried all approved treatment options, and who cannot participate in a clinical trial to access certain unapproved treatments.

The hospital reported that 16 of the 19 patients treated with ZYESAMI for COVID-19 respiratory failure “survived the ICU,” NRx announced. ZYESAMI is the brand name of aviptadil, a synthetic version of a natural chemical made in the human body called human vasoactive intestinal polypeptide.

ZYESAMI is a bio-identical synthetic version of a natural chemical made in the human body called vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP). It may help COVID-19 patients by boosting the production of surfactant in the lungs and blocking toxic cytokines, the drug developer, NRx says. (NRx)
The hospital’s report said there were no serious adverse events associated with the use of the drug, according to the company’s statement. Patients were treated during the Omicron surge at the first onset of respiratory failure, after first trying remdesivir and other approved therapies.

Under Right to Try, NRx currently provides the drug for just the cost to overnight it to the patient, company spokesman Jack Hirschfield told The Epoch Times. Requests can be made through the form on the company’s website. The only catch is that the request must be made by the patient’s doctor.

And that can keep patients from actually trying it.

The family of Arizona businessman Stephen Judge repeatedly asked Banner Ironwood Medical Center in Queen Creek, Arizona to allow alternative treatments, including ZYESAMI, when the hospital’s standard protocols for COVID-19 failed. The hospital said no to every request, said Judge’s daughter, Caitlin Judge Treister.

The Epoch Times was in receipt of letters between the family and the hospital, showing the hospital was not willing for the new drug to be used under Right to Try. The Epoch Times has sent multiple requests for comment to Banner Ironwood Medical Center’s media and public relations department, but has received no response.

After Judge died, his daughter was working with another family wanting to try ZYESAMI, after all other COVID-19 treatments failed to help their loved one in a Minnesota hospital. For two weeks, the family waited for the drug to be given, only to find out that the request was never submitted to NRx, Treister said. That patient suffered a massive heart attack before the drug could be obtained, she said.

“Unfortunately, not everyone is able to get the hospital to cooperate with Right to Try,” NRx CEO Jonathan Javitt, M.D., affirmed.

The company has shared a document on its website explaining the technicalities of how the new drug works. In simplified terms, when the virus that causes COVID-19 gets in the lungs, it causes toxin build-up and restricts the production of surfactant.

Surfactant is the natural substance made in the body that helps keep the hundreds of thousands of tiny air sacs in the lungs open. When those air sacs are open, they allow oxygen to move from the lungs into the blood and throughout the body. COVID-19 causes those air sacs to stop functioning properly.

ZYESAMI works by binding to cells in the lungs, increasing surfactant production, preventing production of virus-related toxins, and blocking virus replication, Javitt told The Epoch Times. The drug continues to be tested in an ongoing National Institutes of Health (NIH) trial.

Roofing contractor Joel Webb, 40, of Colleyville, Texas enthusiastically shared his story of using ZYESAMI as part of an earlier trial in mid-October. His recovery, the husband and father of four said, was nothing short of miraculous.

When he first realized his COVID-19 infection was getting serious, he resisted going to the hospital. Three friends from church had already died from the virus. Checking into the hospital seemed to mean certain death, he told The Epoch Times.

But when a doctor friend urged him to get checked out at an emergency clinic where she was working, he agreed.

He’d been sick for about seven days, and “I was to the point where I didn’t even know where I was,” he said.

A CT scan showed his lungs looked full of shattered glass. Immediately, his doctor at the Frisco, Texas hospital offered ZYESAMI, telling Webb it was still in trials. Webb and his family declined. It seemed too risky to try an unapproved medication, he said.

Over the next few days, Webb’s condition worsened dramatically. He required increasing amounts of oxygen. The next step, he was told, was to go on a ventilator.

Devastated, his family gathered around him in the intensive care unit and prayed. Suddenly, he said, they were at peace about trying ZYESAMI and told his doctors.

Shortly after, a courier delivered the drug, he said. That night, he remembers nurse technician Daniel Igheghe holding his hand, praying with him, and singing a Christian worship song to help Webb drift off to sleep, as he struggled to breathe.

By the next day, something amazing had happened, he said. His vital signs rapidly improved, Webb said, and his need for oxygen dramatically decreased. The trend continued steadily. Soon, he was out of the ICU. And nine days after being admitted to the hospital, he left, no longer on oxygen.

Recently, he returned, though, to personally thank the nurse who held his hand and prayed with him, the doctor who recommended the trial drug, and the pharmacist who filled the prescription. He said he had no side effects from ZYESAMI, other than feeling flushed and hot, as the drug dripped into his vein.

“Then you get cold,” he said with a chuckle. “You can feel it and you know you’ve gotten something.”

This past weekend, he went on a three-mile hike and gave thanks for the drug he believes saved his life.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-drug-for-seriously-ill-covid-19-patients-shows-promise-under-right-to-try-act_4247983.html

*********************************************

'80% of serious COVID cases are fully vaccinated' says Israeli hospital director

Are Israeli hospitals really overloaded with unvaccinated COVID patients? According to Prof. Yaakov Jerris, director of Ichilov Hospital’s coronavirus ward, the situation is completely opposite.

“Right now, most of our severe cases are vaccinated,” Jerris told Channel 13 News. “They had at least three injections. Between seventy and eighty percent of the serious cases are vaccinated. So, the vaccine has no significance regarding severe illness, which is why just twenty to twenty-five percent of our patients are unvaccinated.”

Jerris also revealed some of the confusion in reporting cases. Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Sunday, he told ministers, “Defining a serious patient is problematic. For example, a patient with a chronic lung disease always had a low level of oxygen, but now he has a positive coronavirus test result which technically makes him a ‘serious coronavirus patient,’ but that’s not accurate. The patient is only in a difficult condition because he has a serious underlying illness.”

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/321674

******************************************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

*************************************